Early Career Network: Languages of the Future Writing Retreat

This retreat is part of a broader initiative emerging from the Languages of the Future research cluster at UCL, a project committed to exploring the deep interconnections between language, time, and world-making. Our work asks: how might language limit or enable our conceptions of the future? How can new worlds and new words be created together?

You do not need to have participated in the cluster or its reading group to attend this retreat. All ECRs interested in the futures of their discipline, their scholarship, and of our troubled world, are very welcome.

In a time when our global challenges — climate change, inequality, political upheaval — are complex and interconnected, and where the futures we face are deeply shaped by the words we use to describe them, this retreat offers time to write, think, and collaboratively engage with one another. Our aims are:

• Support academic writing: We will focus on concrete outputs such as drafting abstracts, structuring articles, and writing strong introductions.
• Bridge thought and action: Inspired by interdisciplinary dialogue, the retreat is a space to craft writing that is attuned to both critical reflection and future possibility.
• Invest in futures: We recognize that early career research is not just about individual outputs, but about shaping the future of scholarship itself.

Through structured writing sessions, collaborative discussions, and optional feedback opportunities, this retreat will help participants advance their own research while becoming part of a growing conversation about languages, futures, and academic transformation.

We particularly welcome researchers who are interested in contributing to our forthcoming special issue on ‘Languages of the Future’ in Think Pieces – a UCL-based journal— but there is no obligation to submit. The retreat is about investing in your own work, your own academic future, and the shared futures we are all writing toward.

Preliminary Schedule – Writing Retreat

• 11:30 – Tea/coffee (provided) and welcome
• 12:00 – Introduction from the ‘Languages of the Future’ team, followed by participant introductions
• 12:30 – Collaborative discussion on the future of (academic) writing and research
• 13:30 – Freewriting session
• 14:00 – Lunch (provided)
• 15:00 – Writing to a future-facing prompt
• 16:00 – Opportunity to present on current writing projects (feedback optional)
• 16:45 – Final thoughts and next steps
• 17:00 – Event ends

Organisers: Peter Browning, Flora Sagers and Josh Weeks

Join an ECR network

Register with the British Academy Early Career Researcher Network (London Cluster), which brings together postdoctoral ECRs across the humanities and social sciences disciplines.

Read more about the IAS Early Career Network, which brings together and supports early-career academics working in arts, humanities and social sciences (UCL ONLY)